KUPPAKKAL Vs. MATHAN CHETTIAR

JUDGEMENT

(1.) One Rangaswami Chetty sold be the 1 defendant under Exhibit I, dated 26bh June, 1917, a strip of land about 102 feet long and 21 feet wide having a frontage on a public road out of a large block of building vacant site of which he was the owner. The portion purchased by the 1 defendant I shall call site No. A. The laud exclusive of site No. A may, for the purposes of this appeal, be regarded as consisting of two parts: (1) The portion 30uth of and contiguous to what was sold to the 1 defendant opening also on the public road (this I shall call site No. B), and (2) the bulk of the property at the back of the site No. A and the site No. B to which access from the road was over the said site No. B. (this I shall call site No. C).

(2.) Three days subsequent to the sale of she No. A, Rangaswami CheUy sold the remainder of the block, site3 Nos. B and C, to certain persons from whom the present plaintiffs derive title. On the site No. C the plaintiffs constructed a ginning factory. The 1 defendant, to start with, built a small house facing the roid on her own site, site No A, leaving the rest of her laud at the back of her house as an open space. She then built another house on the vacant land and as it has no frontage on the road, she chimed a right of way over the site No. B.

(3.) The short question to be decided is, whether she is entitled to this right of way? The basis of her claim is the fact that in the sale dead executed in her favour the southern boundary of the site conveyed to her is described to be "Pathway 18 feet in breadth which I am going to set apart," The lower Court having negatived her right, she has preferred this second appeal, lb is found that there were negotiations at the same time in regard to the sale to the 1st defendant as well as to the plaintiff's predecessors-in-title. Whether the 1 defendant has acquired the right she claims, depends entirely upon the construction of the conveyance in her favour. In regard to the surrounding circumstances, two facts seem, in my opinion, to be of outstanding importance. (1) The land sold to the 1 defendant was about 102 to 105 feet in length and it was vacant building land. It was not be the expected that the 1 defendant would only build one house upon it. If more that one house was to be built, the access to the house at the back of the first house would naturally be over the site No. B. (2) The sites B and C were not laid out in building plots, but on the contrary they were regarded as forming one block to be conveyed to one purchaser. That being as, there was no significance in describing site B as an intended pathway unless it was a pathway intended also for the use of the 1st defendant.